


(nothing) could be better

by novembersmith



Series: tentacles in fortunate places [1]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: First Time, Fluff, M/M, Nonhuman Form, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-21 03:16:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/895141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novembersmith/pseuds/novembersmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos had thought, with a not inconsiderable amount of pride, that he was no longer surprised by the strangeness that Night Vale had to throw at him. In fact, he was more often surprised by the rare normal events than the reverse. Which completely invalidated the words ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal,’ but <i>anyway</i>—</p>
            </blockquote>





	(nothing) could be better

**Author's Note:**

> A first-time fic inspired by [this REALLY AWESOME art](http://kawaiisharkarts.tumblr.com/post/55768356169/changed-up-my-cecil-a-bit-a-lot-cuz-cecil-with) and the accompanying commentary on respective sexual expertise. A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE INDEED.
> 
> Tons of thanks to everyone who convinced me not to delete this and flee the internet, and especially to my betas, blotthis and were_duck, who were invaluable and as perfect as perfect Carlos.

***

Aristotelean perfection:

That is perfect:

'1. which is complete — which contains all the requisite parts;

2\. which is so good that nothing of the kind could be better;

3\. which has attained its purpose'

***

Carlos had thought, with a not inconsiderable amount of pride, that he was no longer surprised by the strangeness that Night Vale had to throw at him. In fact, he was more often surprised by the rare normal events than the reverse. Which completely invalidated the words ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal,’ but anyway—

The current situation is really his own fault.

He thought he’d been ready. He’d analyzed romantic films and television shows. He took extensive notes on a variety of porn. But for all that, he’d forgotten to take one very important variable into account.

Location.

He keeps trying to apologize.

“I just didn’t expect it!” Carlos says wretchedly. “It’s not—I don’t mind—and I do want to—with your?” Who could resist such a compellingly inarticulate offer, he thinks, and stares miserably at the black-and-white Blob gyrating on the big screen alongside Elvis.

“It’s fine,” Cecil says stiffly. Even in the low ambient light of the drive-in, Carlos can see his cheeks are bright violet, almost mauve. He’s watching the movie intently, eating the remains of their bucket of popcorn. It’s flavored with frankincense and pine, and most of it is spilled on the floorboards. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. You’re missing the movie.”

Decidedly suboptimal date conditions, Carlos thinks miserably. Malevolent shadow-beings are one thing, but you don’t actually watch movies when you’re on a date at a drive-in unless things are completely, objectively awful. Even Carlos knows that, and this is only his fourth date, ever. His third with Cecil, and it is physically paining him that Cecil looks so embarrassed and hurt and hunched in on himself.

It had been amazing, just minutes before, and then Carlos had ruined everything.

Cecil had put his seat back slightly during the middle of the movie, during one of the dance numbers. He’d bit his lip shyly and looked over at Carlos hopefully. And Carlos had thought—okay. Okay, now. Now was the time to gird his loins and be brave. He was as ready as he’d ever be, and more, he _wanted_. Carlos scrambled over, feeling teenaged and daring and hornier than he ever had in his entire life, even during his actual adolescence.

And fuck, it was good. Had been good. Cecil’s hand had been in Carlos’s hair, tugging reverently, and Carlos had realized he really liked that. Realized that kissing could take on different qualities dependent on physical proximity, and that they were currently _extremely_ physically proximate.

Carlos had thought distantly that Cecil’s saliva might have psychedelic properties, might be addictive, that he should get a sample. Later, though. Not then, not when Cecil’s voice, as soft and ultra-black as a Gaboon pit viper, kept saying his name in between kisses, dark and wondering. His hands had settled on Carlos’s hips, pulled him down, and—frottage, right. Carlos could do frottage. His heart had pounded, and he’d felt, for a moment, like everything was aligning, like everything made sense and he was doing everything right and everything _was_ right.

Then Cecil’s pants, instead of containing a erect penis similar to Carlos’s own, as Carlos had fervently hoped, gave with bizarre ease, like gelatin or hot wax. The whole area caved in and then, there was no other word for it, started writhing.

Carlos flailed backwards, yelping, and, then, to add insult to injury, had somehow honked the car horn in his shocked retreat.

Now denizens of the drive-in movie theater are all glaring at their car, Carlos and Cecil are in their separate respective seats, and Cecil is miserably eating popcorn and refusing to make eye contact.

Carlos supposes he would be similarly miffed if someone reacted to his genitalia by screaming.

This is definitely all Carlos’s fault. He stares at the side of Cecil’s head and tries to figure out what to do next. It’s not an uncommon feeling, in Night Vale, but somehow this is the most terrifying and arcane mystery he’s faced yet.

“You’re missing the best part,” Cecil says miserably, staring straight ahead. The light of the Blob dances across his face, and the sound of Elvis singing something low and poppy about vestibular organs fills the car. “I love this scene.”

Carlos bites down on saying he’s already seen the best part. The best part of anything, here, in the tiny enclosed universe of the car.

He’d honestly never quite understood the appeal of kissing until Cecil. The urge to taste someone else’s mouth: he’d thought of it in terms of mate compatibility, of evaluating mutual hormone levels. And that hypothesis hasn’t been invalidated by this experience, exactly, but. It’s _more_ than that, in a way he can’t quantify. The hum Cecil makes low in his throat and the inexplicable way it seems to travel inside, to sink into Carlos’s bones. The shuddering intimacy of slick membranes meeting, priming his systems for more, the wet aching rhythm and gasps for breath and unexpected moments of syrup-slow sweetness.

He’d never thought he’d have that, had never been bothered and had never cared, but now he does. A lot. He wants that. He wants that back. He wants Cecil to beam up at him, he wants to press down on top of him, he _wants_ —

Cecil won’t even look at him. All of his eyes are on the movie screen, and the movie is frankly terrible, and Cecil never ignores Carlos. There’s always at least one eye on him, maybe even when they’re in different rooms. But not now.

Confess, Carlos concludes, and braces himself for laughter. He deserves as much. Cecil deserves as much, or more.

“I’m-a-virgin.”

It comes out all one word, and Carlos slides down in the passenger seat, wincing. He’d known he would have to reveal this eventually, but he’d hoped it would be more suave. ‘I had no idea,’ Cecil would say, ‘You were just so adept at sexual intercourse!’

Instead, Cecil is spitting popcorn everywhere and choking on the kernels.

For a moment, there’s the reassuring business of the Heimlich, which is a fascinating and completely engrossing distraction, but it soon passes. Now Cecil’s just staring and Carlos feels horribly awkward again, releasing Cecil’s chest and settling back in his own seat and staring down at his hands.

There are bits of half-chewed popcorn on the windshield. Carlos has almost killed his date with how horrible he is at dating. And he doesn’t even have the excuse of malevolent shadow energy this time.

“I didn’t—I thought I had adequately prepared,” he says helplessly into the sudden silence of the car. He tries to think of something, anything to say that will improve the situation. “I took notes,” is what he says instead. “Not, um. On people, living people. Or dead people. Videos. Educational films online. You know.”

Cecil makes another choking noise, wheezing, but seems to be able to catch his breath again without assistance, so Carlos just covers his face with his palms and tries to stop existing.

The scenario came up surprisingly often in porn: a virgin attempting sex for the first time. What had previously seemed slightly awkward and unrealistic to Carlos on film now seems like a beautiful, impossible dream.

The reality of the scenario is horrible. Carlos is horrible. He is horrible at this, he’d known he’d be horrible at this, _why had he thought he wouldn’t be horrible at this_? Carlos is good at one thing, and that is science. Relationships are difficult enough, too full of unknowable variables to predict any outcomes with a high degree of certainty, and that’s even without adding romance to the mix. How had Carlos actually thought he was ready to introduce sex to an already unstable and overwhelmingly uncontrollable system?

Now he’s hurt Cecil’s feelings, and he feels horrible himself, and yet somehow he’s still hard anyway.

Who, Carlos thinks wretchedly, chooses to do this to themselves?

He jumps when a cool hand wraps around his wrist and tugs, implacable and stronger than expected. When he screws one eye slightly open, one of Cecil’s eyes is staring back at him. Carlos feels himself blushing harder.

“You’re serious,” Cecil says, in a dulcet, disbelieving voice that lilts upwards at the end, as if he’s unsure whether to end the phrase as a question or a statement.

Carlos reminds himself that it was not Cecil who had screamed at Carlos’s unusually mobile and multifarious genitalia, and makes himself nod. Cecil breathes out, a hiss of breath between his teeth that gives Carlos absolutely fuck-all to go on. He feels, suddenly, very, very naked. For the first time, he wishes he had a leather balaclava, or maybe a hood on his lab coat to hide in.

“I really am. I’m sorry,” he tries. Once, he had dignity, he thinks. This is awful, but Cecil is looking at him again, and touching him, and dignity probably isn’t all that useful in the long run anyway, so Carlos abandons the shreds he has left. “I wasn’t expecting—anything... non-humanoid?” he admits, and looks back down at his own pants, where his own decidedly humanoid genitalia are extremely upset with him. He’s still hard. It’s embarrassing and awful. And Carlos really would have thought to expect Cecil to be more than human in the pants area, more like Night Vale and less like the general population, except for some reason he just _hadn't_. “But I don’t mind your anything, I really don’t. I should have realized, I wouldn’t have been surprised, normally, it was just that. I just was—a bit—”

“Nervous,” Cecil finishes for him, in a wondering tone of voice that makes Carlos feel a little like he’s been poisoned again, like he had been the previous week, his blood boiling and stomach roiling and tongue thick and swollen. He tries to slide lower in his seat, but Cecil still has his hand, and he leans over to kiss Carlos’s fingertips and it’s a whole new sick, messy heat that curls through Carlos’s veins. “Oh, Carlos. _I’m_ sorry. I was being an asshole. Was I—am I going too fast? We can stick to kissing, we don’t even have to kiss, we can—”

“No!” Carlos says immediately. “No, kissing is good. More, um. Would be really good. It’s—it’s not a bad kind of nervous, I just. I wanted to—” He closes his eyes, tries to imagine this as though he’s presenting an abstract for a study. “I wanted to be adequately talented at sexual intercourse. For you.” And I was decidedly not, he thinks wistfully.

“You’re already perfect,” Cecil says automatically, and Carlos winces. “I never imagined, I never thought,” Cecil trails off, his eyes all wide and luminous. “But how could anyone resist you? _Why_ would anyone?”

“I don’t know. I’m not actually very good at—” people “—relationships, if you haven’t noticed,” Carlos says, feeling wretched.

“You are wonderful at everything,” Cecil assures him and kisses Carlos’s fingertips again. The way he smiles around Carlos’s thumb as he nips it with his too-sharp teeth makes Carlos shudder and forget, for the moment, the point he’s trying to make.

“But I’m not, you know I’m not,” Carlos protests, because he really, really isn’t. He knows he isn’t.  He has already missed two dates with Cecil, just because he got caught up in his lab work. Which is horrible, and Cecil deserves better, and Carlos is _trying_.

But the only date he’d been on that wasn’t with Cecil, he had spilled a biological sample he’d forgotten he’d had in his pocket, created a quarantine zone in a five-star restaurant, and even after that, alone with Donald in the shower of bleach and rubbing alcohol, he’d still come, well. Embarrassingly early. Before proceedings. As it were.

Donald had suggested it might be a clinical disorder.

After that disaster, Carlos had decided that it was much more efficient and economical and less soul-crushing to take care of his sexual needs himself. He had it down to a, well. A science.

But now there’s Cecil, and Carlos is thirty-three and has no idea how to bring anyone besides himself, perfunctorily and joylessly, to orgasm.

Let alone someone that has multiple— _somethings_ , and who is as socially ept and charming and sensual as radio host and local celebrity and town heartthrob Cecil Baldwin.

“Carlos. My Carlos. You know you don’t have to be perfect to be perfect to me, don't you?” Cecil says, and Carlos blinks at him and tries to process this. Cecil is already smiling as Carlos starts to flush.

“Oh,” he says. “ _Oh_.”

Then Cecil starts to climb over the gear shift again, knocking the car into drive for a terrifying moment before continuing over into Carlos’s lap.

“You took notes,” Cecil says breathlessly, nose to Carlos’s nose. “On porn. For _me_.”

“I did,” Carlos says, and remembering earlier, puts his hands on Cecil’s hips. Cecil’s smile, this up close, is breathtakingly sharp and tender.

“I promise, when it comes to you, Carlos, I am embarrassingly easy,” he says, in the hushed tone of a confession. “You think I form a spermatophore for just anyone?”

“Spermatophore? Like a cephalopod?” Carlos breathes, because he just can’t stop himself, Darwin’s fucking finches, Carlos is the _worst_.

But instead of laughing or rolling his eyes or being offended... Cecil just shivers, his tattoos blurring around his wrists and neck, and then drapes himself over Carlos like night falling.

“Pods, right. Totally,” Cecil says, and, biting his lower lip with those pointed, impossibly white teeth, rocks his hips down into Carlos’s lap, where his extremely boring penis is as hard as a metastable allotrope of carbon. Cecil’s own lap writhes gently underneath his tartan pants, and this time, Carlos is expecting it. “Maybe, um, you should get some firsthand notations done. Not written notes!” he clarifies, looking suddenly flustered. “Mental notes, or on your smartphone? Or. Um. Just, you could observe my reproductive organs. Ours. Respectively. Together. Later. At some point. One day.”

Carlos grins a little, helplessly, and his hands slide up Cecil’s hips to slip under his shirt, to brush against the smooth skin beneath. It feels wonderfully cool under his fingers, and even better when Cecil’s third eyelid descends and he makes a cooing, trilling sound of delight. Every sense seems to be part of some exponential positive feedback loop of good feeling, of building intensity.

And... it’s really not that difficult, after all, he thinks. Touching someone else. Being touched. Carlos laughs, suddenly, feeling impossibly lighter. Maybe, he thinks, it was foolish to observe anyone or anything else and try to form a parameter of behavior when Cecil is so very, very singular. Maybe it would be foolish to do so with anyone, even outside of Night Vale.

In science, you made observations, then drew your hypothesis, and performed further experiments. You didn’t try to fit the observations to the hypothesis, or the data to the desired conclusion.

Maybe sex and science weren’t that different, after all. He just... had to gather his own data.

“My reproductive organs probably aren’t as exciting as yours,” Carlos warns. “But, um. I would like that. I would really like that, Cecil.”

Cecil beams at him, impossibly wide and terrifyingly toothy, and Carlos smiles back.

“No rush, of course,” Cecil says against Carlos’s mouth. “We shouldn’t hurry. I want your first time to be—well. Not in the front seat of my car with the angels watching.”

That’s—huh. Not a negative factor. Latent unexpected voyeurism kink, or desperation? Either way, Carlos is really not bothered. He’ll analyze his response later. Right now he just settles into the sensation, the feeling of being watched and the heat in his blood and the way the rest of the universe seems to fall to the wayside, distant and blurry.

“We can hurry,” Carlos says, and, feeling extremely intrepid and daring, pulls Cecil’s hips down and thinks he feels over seven separate areas writhe. Fascinating, and stimulating, to be sure.

“Carlos,” Cecil hisses, and their kissing goes from something open-mouthed and enthusiastic to something deep and open, Carlos’s jaw aching a bit and his throat buzzing with a moan. Cecil is somehow still speaking, praising Carlos and babbling about rose petals, even with his tongue tangled around Carlos’s, and Carlos just—for the time being—ignores it. Their mouths are slick, opening and closing together, rhythm instinctive, and good, and tugging something deep in his belly.

It’s easy to stop thinking, to just touch, to arch his neck when Cecil’s fingers tighten in his hair, to rock upward and hear Cecil’s coo of delight as he pushes, writhing, back down.

For a moment the car fills with internal, unholy light, bioluminescent blue and emanating from Cecil’s pants. Carlos pushes him backwards for a moment, creating the space between them to look down.

There’s the tip of something purple-blue and sinuous creeping out the waistband of Cecil’s tartan trousers. It looks—interesting. Fascinating. Prehensile. Carlos can imagine it, for a moment, curled cool and slick on his skin, or around his cock, or even inside him. He tentatively reaches down and it twines around his fingers.

“Carlos,” Cecil breathes, then leans up so his words are curling right along the shell of Carlos’s ear. “I forgot to tell you.” His hips are undulating, and his spermatophore—his spermatophores?—his reproductive organs are pulsing, and Carlos can feel them, pushing up against his own denim-clad cock and one twining over his fingers. There are so many nerves in the human hand, in the fingers, and right now Carlos can feel every single one.

“You should be nervous,” Cecil says, and his voice is positively obscene now, dark and liquid and curling. Carlos cants his hips up helplessly into Cecil’s, and oh god, is something in Cecil’s pants vibrating? He can’t breathe, he can’t think of anything but Cecil, above and around and whispering into him. “Because I’m going to absolutely _ruin_ you for anyone else.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Carlos says, and comes in his pants just exactly, precisely as there’s a hard rap at the window.

Cecil, because he is apparently evil incarnate, leans over and rolls the window down and beams out at the interloper. Carlos, his eyes rolled back in his head, respiratory functions offline, motor skills non-existent, elects to respond to this new stimulus by hiding his face in Cecil’s neck and panting. He thinks he should be embarrassed, but it’s hard to think, let alone worry that Cecil thinks less of him for coming in his pants like a teenager, or about anyone else altogether.

“Excuse me,” says a dried, bored voice. “You need a permit for PDA in this place of business, and there’s there’s been complaints about bio-light—” The voice cuts off.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” the member of the Sheriff’s Secret Police says, flashlight waving around wildly. “Oh my god, Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Scientist, I am _so sorry_.”

“It’s no problem, Deputy,” Cecil says sweetly, and hidden between their bodies, his tentacle is still skillfully groping Carlos’s fingers, twining slick and suggestive. God. Carlos feels his cock twitching, despite everything, and it is difficult to worry about whether they’re about to be dragged to an abandoned missile silo for re-education. “Really, I should have known better, but Carlos, he just turns me into such a schoolboy, you know how it is. We got carried away. It’s embarrassing, really.”

Carlos, halfway through this speech, decides turnabout is fair play and scrapes his teeth over the twining tattoos on Cecil’s throat, smiling when he hears Cecil’s voice break on that last word.

“I have to submit a report,” the poor deputy says, wringing his hands and sending the flashlight beam every which way. Carlos recognizes distantly that he seems fairly young, for a member of the Sheriff's Secret Police. Maybe this is his first assignment, like a movie theater cop, of sorts. “But, um. Just a warning for now! Please don’t do it again. You know we need time to brace ourselves and put on our special balaclavas for intimate monitoring duties. And put out that light! Please. Sir.”

“Of course, Deputy. And thank you for serving our community!” Cecil calls genially. The light in the car dims to less illumination than an iPod might produce, and then, conversation apparently over, Cecil rolls the window back up.

Carlos, surprising himself, starts laughing. His pants are unpleasantly sticky, the angels and Sheriff’s Secret Police are apparently voyeurs, and his boyfriend’s tentacles are tickling his fingertips as said boyfriend complains, vociferously, about having to remove himself to the driver’s seat for the remainder of the film.

“You just look so lovely, all flushed and emanating pheromones, ugh. Torture. I knew we should have waited,” Cecil finishes wistfully, shifting in his seat in a way that Carlos recognizes with dawning delight indicates sexual frustration. “But we’ve already gotten a warning, and leaving the film early would, well. Be unwise. Ugh.” He replaces his tentacles with long, dry fingers, taking Carlos’s hand.

“Does that count as a first time, do you think?” Carlos wants to know, and kisses Cecil’s knuckles diffidently. “I didn’t get to—" he gestures vaguely downwards towards Cecil’s pants.

“Hm?” Cecil asks, still staring at their joined hands with a glazed look. “Oh. Oh! Well. My fault, really. Should have had more patience. And, hm, well, there are the standard definitions as far as satanic rituals go, by which I think you still qualify, but really, on a personal level, I think that’s up to you, isn’t it? Do you feel deflowered?” He doesn’t sound mocking, or derisively amused. He sounds, Carlos thinks, genuinely curious.

Carlos ignores the satanic aside and considers his own feelings for a moment. “Actually, I don’t think it’s really a binary state,” he concludes, a little surprised. “Maybe I’m a little further along the continuum than I’d been previously. But, um. It was definitely a milestone.” Successful orgasm with another person. Premature and non-reciprocated, but still. Better than he’s done in the past.

The other person involved currently seems pretty pleased with himself, for one. Cecil’s grinning rather toothily.

“Good,” he purrs. “More later, then. Much more. It will be wonderful, I promise. Oh, but Carlos, look! This part is my _actual_ favorite.”

Cecil slides back into his own seat, turns on the engine and moves the gear shift from park to drive, foot presumably still on the brake.

“Brace yourself,” he says, glancing over from under some of his eyelashes, grinning a shark-toothed grin.

A dark, impossibly non-Euclidean figure with a pompadour is rising from the celluloid waves and is slouching towards the camera. Carlos has totally lost the plot, but, he thinks, that doesn’t really matter so much anyway. Especially as the figure has just burst from out of the screen—it’s pretty easy to pick up what's going on from there. The parking lot turns into a sea of screaming bumper cars as the interdimensional, grayscale beast lumbers around, crooning a version of ‘Love Me Tender’ on a subsonic pitch that is perfectly audible through the blood collecting in Carlos’s ear canal.

“I just love this part!” Cecil sighs happily, and expertly steers them through the panicked, screaming fellow denizens of the evening’s feature film.

I love _you_ , Carlos thinks, and then bites his tongue. He pulls his miniature mass spectrophotometer out of his pocket, along with his tape recorder, and starts taking readings as they go.

“I’m sorry,” he shouts, in between dictating measurements. With the Elvis soundtrack, Cecil whooping as the car turns on two wheels, and the Blob gurgling, this is going to be an interesting tape to transcribe back in his lab. “It’s just, the trans-dimensionality of a two dimensional monster devouring three-dimensional beings could be really useful to my understanding of Night Vale’s spatio-temporal anomalies.”

“Great!” Cecil says, beaming. “Only, the movie’s almost over, so better hurry. Oh, oh, Mrs. Peters is trying to cut us off!” There’s a subdued thumping, and Cecil crows, “Hah!” as their vehicle goes up and over some obstruction in their path. It makes it a little difficult to read the instrumentation, but Carlos manages.

Then, the entire parking lot flickers. The Blob belches, turns, then lurches back towards the tattered screen, dragging a car or two with it as it goes. With the sound of a microwave catching fire, it merges back into a pristine, 2D credits reel, which begins scrolling casually down the screen.

The Jurassic Park-like gates, which really Carlos should have taken note of when they’d arrived, open up slowly, and the survivors begin trickling out into the Night Vale night.

“Did you have fun?” Cecil wants to know, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel as they wait for traffic to clear. His voice is rich and creamy, languidly pleased. “A good movie with a car chase, and useful data for your scientific experiments, that’s quite a sixth and quarter date, right?” He glances over, then looks back out at the sea of red lights, voice spilling out faster. “I mean, I know the orgasm could have been better, but given the circumstances—”

“I—” Carlos says, and then laughs and scratches the back of his head. “Cecil, it was wonderful. All of it. I just, I’m sorry I keep doing science on all of our dates. I’m trying to be better about that.”

“Carlos,” Cecil says, and takes Carlos’s hand with—well, both of his hands are at a perfect ten and two on the steering wheel, so it must be something else. Carlos lets it wind around his fingers and thinks it feels a little, but not quite entirely, unlike holding a very friendly sea snake.  “I’m not in any way impugning your perfection, because this actually renders you yet more worthy of adoration than before, which I had previously thought impossible. But sometimes you can be a little ridiculous.”

Usually Cecil is not quite so effusive in person—his glib tongue and practiced cadence are saved for the radio, and Carlos finds himself blushing hot, especially when Cecil shoots him a bright, blue glance that somehow, despite the darkness of the car, seems capable of seeing the flush rising up Carlos’s throat.

Then he looks away and seems a little flustered himself. “I mean, well. It’s just. You don’t mind when I broadcast things, do you? For the news?”

“Of course not,” Carlos says, because it had been one of the things he’d come to terms with long ago, back when he first started calling Cecil for non-personal reasons. “As long as they’re not too, um. Explicit.”

“Well, it is a public radio program,” Cecil says happily, and tugs Carlos’s hand over to give it a quick, open-mouthed kiss on the palm that should be entirely platonic or at least, non-extraordinary but instead only makes Carlos feel more hot and humid, even in the cool desert night air.

When they get to Carlos’s lab, Carlos takes a deep breath, then puts his spectrophotometer carefully in his pocket.

“Do you want to come inside,” he says, staring down at his very normal, very human hands. “And maybe, um. See some of my Bunsen burners?”

There is a loud rustling from the other side of the car, and then soft lips brush his cheek.

“Oh, I really, really do,” Cecil says, and stays close, sighing against Carlos’s skin, before pulling back and looking straight ahead. “But I have a lot of planning to do! Improvisation has it’s benefits, of course, but really, you deserve the very, very best, Carlos. And I will do my best to be that.”

“I don’t think you’ll have to try very hard,” Carlos says, and feels, maybe, a little relieved at the reprieve. He does, after all, have a lot of processing to do. What was it Cecil had said earlier? It had settled somewhere deep in the ventricles of his heart, thrummed there, and Carlos wants to give it back, wants Cecil to feel that safe and wanted and secure, too. “You don’t have to be the best to be the best to me.”

“Carlos,” Cecil rasped, and then shivered all over, the edges of him blurring so that the only solid things about him were his tattoos. “Get out of the car before I won’t let you out of the car.”

“Okay,” Carlos says, voice wobbling slightly. “Night, Cecil.”

He fumbles for the door handle, forgets to tickle it just the way it likes and takes a moment extra to convince it before stumbling out into the night, pants sticky and face hot, a slightly different person than he’d been just hours before, and yet, exactly the same. Not what he’d expected, but perfect. Almost.

He bends back down to look through the window.

“Sorry, I forgot,” he says. “Goodnight kiss?”

“What’s a perfect date without a goodnight kiss,” Cecil agrees, leaning improbably far over until he’s got an elbow out the open window, looking up at Carlos through floppy hair. “Like a sundae without a cherry, or a void without howling.”

This kiss is soft, and sweet, the concluding notes of a brilliant paper that promises further study. Carlos forgets this time and keeps his eyes open, but it’s okay, because Cecil does too.

It takes a long time for Carlos to pull back, find his keys, remember where he is and what they’re for.

“Good night, Carlos,” Cecil says, licking his lips before smiling. His eyes are impossibly bright. “Good night.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Podfic: (Nothing) Could be Better](https://archiveofourown.org/works/996428) by [magicranberries](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicranberries/pseuds/magicranberries)




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